Staff Engineer - Platform Engineering

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

A Staff Platform Engineer defines and drives technical strategy for platform and runtime capabilities that support scalable, secure, and highly available product experiences. This role architects, designs, and delivers foundational services while acting as a technical leader across teams to solve complex, cross-functional problems and enable engineering velocity.

Essential Functions

• Define and drive technical strategy and roadmap for platform and runtime capabilities aligned to product and enterprise needs.
• Architect, design, build, and operate scalable, secure, and highly available platform services.
• Lead complex, high-impact initiatives from concept through implementation, influencing cross-team technical direction.
• Partner with product and engineering teams to understand requirements and enable seamless integration with platform services.
• Implement secure-by-default solutions across infrastructure and application layers.
• Contribute to and enforce best practices across software development lifecycle, CI/CD, and infrastructure automation.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership across teams.
• Participate in production support and drive improvements in reliability, observability, and operational excellence.
• Stay current with emerging technologies and apply them to solve large-scale platform challenges.
• Support risk management, security, and compliance requirements.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field or equivalent experience.
• Typically 8+ years of software or platform engineering experience.
• Strong experience with distributed systems and large-scale infrastructure.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and fully automated software delivery.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker, ECS, etc.).
• Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, etc.).
• Experience with a modern programming language (Java, Python, Go, etc.).
• Experience working with cloud infrastructure (AWS or similar).
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building platform capabilities in identity, authentication, authorization, secrets management, or certificate management.
• Strong understanding of modern identity and security standards (OAuth/OIDC, TLS/mTLS, SPIFFE, PKI).
• Experience with encryption systems, HSMs, KMS, and cryptographic trust systems.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems components (API gateways, load balancing, caching, messaging systems).
• Experience building developer platforms, APIs, and self-service tooling.
• Strong knowledge of SRE principles (SLA, SLO/SLI, observability, alerting, incident response).
• Experience operating high-scale production systems and resolving complex incidents.
• Experience with service mesh, secrets management systems (e.g., Vault), or certificate lifecycle automation.
• Experience writing advanced IaC modules or platform abstractions.
• Relevant certifications (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform) are a plus.

Physical Requirements

Early Warning works together in a highly collaborative office environment. Working conditions consist of a normal office environment. Work is primarily sedentary and requires extensive use of a computer and involves sitting for periods of approximately four hours. Work may require occasional standing, walking, kneeling, and reaching. Must be able to lift 10 pounds occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently. Requires visual acuity and dexterity to view, prepare, and manipulate documents and office equipment including personal computers. Requires the ability to communicate with internal and/or external customers.

Employee must be able to perform essential functions and physical requirements of position with or without reasonable accommodation.
 

The base pay scale for this position in:
San Francisco, CA in USD per year is: $174,000 - $223,000.
Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits.
This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness 

• Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.

• 401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.

• Paid Time Off – Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.

• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave

• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.